Chapter 533: Do you think you can decode the vampire’s puzzle? Can’t break it, buy it at a high price!

"Want to give it a try?" Viscount Seibesh twirled the small black paper package in his hands, observing it back and forth repeatedly.

"Give it a try!" Garrett nodded confidently: "I’ve tried it before! It works great! No problems!"

"Do you really plan to use this for testing?"

Julia floated by with her beloved lace umbrella, effortlessly blocking the mild evening sunlight with the edge of the umbrella draped in mist.

The vampire, appearing youthful, paused and looked back with a slight smile, her tone mocking:

"Be careful, it burns just like silver dust, directly harming you!"

Viscount Seibesh was indeed hesitant about this. Although he could somewhat resist the burn of silver dust, it was hardly pleasant. The thing Garrett concocted, the burning power, it couldn’t possibly be more intense than silver dust...

After all, Garrett was a healer! The holy light emitted by a healer was harmful to their vampire kind!

Garrett calmly handed over a document from his spatial bag:

"Here, take the experimental records made with skeleton soldiers. These low-grade skeletons held it in their hands for half an hour with no signs of burns!"

The record book was densely filled with handwriting of varying darkness and style, clearly from over a dozen magicians. The experiment duration, mana values, the amount of materials used, each set was meticulously recorded.

If the records were forged, the forgery would be overly cumbersome.

Viscount Seibesh glanced at the records, then at the results. The test subjects were low-grade skeleton soldiers; after using Garrett’s newly developed casting material, each one could withstand sunlight for at least 30 minutes to two hours.

"It looks pretty good. — Shall I give it a try?"

"Go ahead! — Don’t just keep looking at the torn paper bag, use it immediately! The casting material loses effectiveness if exposed to light for too long!"

The test results were indeed good. Upon tearing open the bag, a wisp of light black smoke rose, effectively blocking out the sunlight. Viscount Seibesh relaxed, rubbing another piece in his hands back and forth, and sighed with satisfaction:

"It really works! — How do you plan to sell this material?"

"Name your price."

"I’ll have to research it a bit first..."

Garrett was very easygoing, casually stuffing the rest of the casting material to him:

"Help me promote it! If the orders are large, I can offer a discount!"

With two out of the small stack of ten paper bags used, the rest remained inexpensive; let’s see what you can figure out...

Viscount Seibesh returned to his room, closed the door, and extinguished all lights—vampires didn’t need them, thanks to their dark vision—and eagerly pulled out a piece, looking it over from all angles:

A square thin sheet. An inch long, an inch wide, and not much thicker than a hair strand.

Light black, semi-transparent, uniform in thickness, smooth on the surface. The edges were cleanly fractured, with the corners slightly askew.

"Cut with a knife? Was it originally a large sheet?" Viscount Seibesh touched the corners of the thin sheet, drawing conclusions. But what exactly was this material?

It resembled neither crystal, glass, ivory, nor seashell. Viscount Seibesh, who had lived a century, had never seen such a material before.

"Mages always come up with strange things." The young vampire muttered, casting an identification spell on the spot.

No feedback.

Identification impossible.

The identification spell indicated, "I recognize it, but it doesn’t recognize me..."

"Sly humans."

Viscount Seibesh shrugged, not particularly surprised. It was normal not to identify it; if it could be easily identified, what would humans sell?

The spell of identification, when created or when the caster first learned this version, had certain items recorded in it, allowing it to provide feedback. For items never recorded, it could only offer some basic information:

Length, width, height, weight. Possible contents (often inaccurate), possible manufacturing methods (frequently inaccurate). Then, if the identifier had extensive experience and could use a series of techniques to provide richer information, the success rate of identification could be increased.

Otherwise, what use would there be for identification masters? If everyone had an identification spell, wouldn’t that solve everything?

He calmly set up his bottles and jars. Scales, beakers, test tubes, crucibles, various reagents... then carefully cut a 1 square centimeter piece from the thin sheet, treasured it at the alchemy table, and began experimenting.

Observation.

Weighing.

Scraping the surface for powder.

Placing it in a test tube, adding reagents, watching the reaction.

First, he added sulfuric acid. Viscount Seibesh eagerly watched, but

it seemed like there was hardly any reaction...

Then, scrape off some more powder, add some caustic soda and try?

...This time there was a reaction, albeit a very weak one, hardly better than none. Viscount Seibesh also tried nitric acid, hydrochloric acid, baking soda, apparently to no avail...

So, burn it and see? Viscount Seibesh carefully cut another 1 square centimeter, pinched it with tweezers, and brought it close to an alcohol lamp.

Wow, it burned quickly!

Clearly, this material was flammable. But the flame had no special color, so it was still impossible to determine what it was...

Viscount Seibesh was locked in his room, rolled up his sleeves, and worked tirelessly. It wasn’t until deep into the night, as his friends came knocking loudly, that he opened the door with lifeless eyes:

"What do you want... I’m not done with my work yet... I haven’t figured out what this thing is yet..."

Quickly, a group of mischievous friends rolled up their sleeves and joined Viscount Seibesh’s efforts.

These friends had even lesser alchemy skills than Viscount Seibesh. Five people, each with a one-inch by one-inch thin sheet, and before they figured anything out, it had already disappeared among various reagents.

Then, aside from being flammable, inflammable, acid-resistant, alkali-resistant, and oil-resistant, after much effort, everyone had not come to any reliable conclusions. As for what this material was, sorry.

"Where did you get this from?"

"That mage Nordmark gave it to me. He used it to replace silver dust as a casting material to block sunlight, and I tested it—it works well and doesn’t hurt the hands."

"So you want to try to decode it? If you can decode it, you don’t need to buy it?"

"Of course! Why buy it if I can make it myself?"

However, shamefully, many noble vampires tried their hands and still failed. Everyone looked at each other, struggling over the remaining two thin sheets for a while, until someone suddenly said:

"There’s too little experimental material!"

A realization dawned on them. The young vampires agreed:

"Right, that’s it! It must be because there’s too little! If we had more experimental material, we definitely wouldn’t fail!"

"Seibesh, when that mage comes tomorrow, ask him to sell you more pieces! We’ll pool our money!"

"Buy a hundred pieces! A hundred pieces should be enough!"

"If we still can’t figure it out with a hundred pieces... we’ll just buy them..."

Everyone unanimously agreed to this solution. The next evening, when Garrett visited again, Viscount Seibesh indeed made a purchase request.

"A small batch... 100 pieces at 10 gold coins each. A discount at 1000 gold coins."

"That expensive?"

"A fifth-level transmutation mage was responsible for development, and a sixth-level necromancer led the testing. Plus, so many magicians participated..." Garrett shrugged righteously:

"You’ve seen the experimental records."

In that case, it really wasn’t expensive. Not only was it not expensive, but 1000 gold coins couldn’t even recover the research and testing costs...

— Are you so confident? You think I’ll buy 100 pieces of casting material and still can’t figure out what it is?

— Of course! What I’ve developed, how could it be easily decoded?

The two smiled as they looked at each other, sparks flying in their eyes. After a moment, Viscount Seibesh shrugged and happily paid the money. Money exchanged, goods exchanged. Garrett watched as the young vampire disappeared from view before smirking:

"Big spender~~~"

A thousand gold coins, just like that!

I thought he would bargain!

Unfortunately, having ten times the research subjects does not mean ten times the success rate. The young vampires fiddled with half the material, still clueless, making no progress. Out of necessity, for the honor of the vampires, they took the material to disturb Marquis Tergu.

Marquis Tergu’s expertise was indeed different. Holding a thin sheet, he closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment, then immediately concluded:

"This contains silver."

The young vampires nodded repeatedly. So far, this was their only achievement. But... after pushing to this point, there was no further.

"It’s not silver dust."

"It’s a combination of some material and silver."

"Flammable silver dust... Hmm, it must be a high-order material activated by magic, otherwise it couldn’t achieve this. But, there’s no burning sensation to the touch... Hmm..."

Marquis Tergu pondered with his eyes closed. On the other side of the long table, Miss Julia picked up a thin sheet, twirling it between her fingers, then suddenly exclaimed with surprise:

"Hey, this thin sheet can record images!"

With a swo

osh, five or six heads crowded around. The lace umbrella rotated slightly, a black light opened, covering half of the study. In the black light, the thin sheet at Miss Julia’s fingertips indeed displayed a faint human figure.

"It looks pretty good."

"It can be used to record the image of an enemy."

"Perhaps it can also capture part of a soul?"

"For cursing? Good idea! Let’s try it!"

"We need more experimental material! Buy, buy, buy!"

The vampires’ needs were passed from Marquis Tergu to the archmage, and then from the archmage to Garrett. For this type of casting material that could block sunlight, protect vampires and undead, and capture images, the vampires offered an astonishingly high price:

A single purchase of a thousand pieces, each at five gold coins, totaling 5000 gold coins.

"By the way, can you give a discount for the Black Crow Swamp?"

Archmage Grom also asked casually. Five gold coins each, too expensive for an apprentice mage to afford. Unfortunately, the lower the rank of the skeleton soldiers, the more they needed this material...

"Sure! — Otherwise, I’ll sell you the patent, you handle manufacturing and supply, and just give me a share of the money?"

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